A Week of Research

This week in Writing 39C was mainly focused on narrowing down to a rough idea of what you want to research and write about for the Historical Conversations Project (HCP) on. For this assignment, we are required to choose a topic that scientists are researching on, and write about what scientists and researchers found about this topic. This project is designed to get us, the students, to learn more about the background of our topics, which will transition into the Advocacy Project (AP) occurring later in the quarter.

Some people in my class are focusing on research done by scientists on the animal behavior mentioned in the Time Magazine articles we read last week. These topics include animal intelligence, mourning, communication, and their social behaviors. However, I wanted to learn more about animals from a more scientific perspective. I’m interested in learning more about how animal phenomenon provide insight and inspiration for drug development and biotechnology. I plan for this topic for the HCP to transition to the AP, in which I could advocate the importance of animal conservation because of their medical implications.

I became interested in this topic when I came across a TED Talk that I later posted onto my Twitter page. The TED Talk was about the variety of spider silk and their chemical properties. The presenter ended the talk by discussing the implications of research into spider silk, such as creating new fabric for clothing or engineering innovative prosthetic technology and muscle repair.

Because my topic was not exactly focused on animals but rather the scientific research derived from animals, I approached Dr. Haas, my Writing 39C professor, about the relevance of my topic to the assignment. She expressed concerns about how I was focusing more on the AP, rather than the HCP. She told me that my topic could work but I would have to be more specific about the animal I’m researching. For example, rather than having a broad topic about on animal phenomena and its medical implication, I would have to focus specifically on research on the cell regenerative properties of jellyfish. She advised me to do more research on the topic and see what I can find.

While researching more about my topic this weekend, I came across several articles discussing how toxins derived from scorpions and sea sponges might be able to treat brain cancer. Upon further research, I found several scholarly journals and research papers investigating the cancer-killing properties of these toxins. I also found how difficult researching my topic would be. Aside from the scientific terms and jargons that made the scholarly journals difficult to understand, the amount of relevant and credible sources were limited. Although there are a lot of scientists researching the medicinal properties of animals, they are not all studying the same animal species. This means that if I wanted to write about more sources and research done on the topic, I would have to broaden the topic of my project.

Although I already encountered difficulties with researching, I’m not yet willing to give up my research topic. I’ve only begun researching my topic and I’ve only researched specifically on toxins in scorpions and sea sponges. There are still many animal phenomenona I could research and write about for my HCP.

#research #science #animalresearch